The average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime dropped to an all-time low in the first quarter of this year.

According to Statistics Korea on Wednesday, the total fertility rate stood at zero-point-81 in the January-to-March period, zero-point-06 down from the previous record set a year earlier.

After hitting one-point-02 in the first quarter 2019, the total fertility rate has been staying under one for 16 consecutive quarters.

The number of newborns in the first quarter also fell six percent on-year to 64-thousand-256, another record-low for the period, with births in March alone dropping eight-point-one percent to a record-low at 21-thousand-138.

The number of deaths in the first quarter, meanwhile, fell 14-point-two percent on-year to 89-thousand-015, due largely to a drop in COVID-19 deaths, which stabilized sufficiently for the disease to be downgraded to an endemic.

With the number of deaths still surpassing that of births for the 41st consecutive month, the population naturally declined by seven-thousand-784 in March.